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Jason Christopher
( ) |name=Jason Christopher Lupus |sex=Male |species= |dob=16th |mob=10 |yob=1591 |age=Ageless |facs= |birthplace=Romania |height=6'4" |build=Athletic |hair=Black |eyes=Moonlight yellow |skin=Lightly tanned |actor=Alessio Pozzi |music=The Animal or Monster }}Overview= The werewolf Lord of the Children of the Moon is now semi-retired and living in La Push, Washington as the owner of K9's club. Not particularly partial to human beings and most vampires, he is suspicious of pretty much everyone who isn't a werewolf or some sort of shifter. He has relaxed a great deal since relocating to Washington and meeting Jacob Black, but in his four hundred plus years he has developed quite a reputation for himself as a boogie man, especially among (though not limited to) vampires, who referred to him as The Nightstalker. Personality For most of his over four centuries of life, Jason had been deeply damaged individual. All of the most memorable events in his life were tragic, from the many lifetimes of being used by his father as a weapon, to the loss of his mother and, later, his wife and child at the hands of his father. This lead him down a path of vengeance where he became far more like his father than he would ever have been comfortable to admit, had he even been able to clearly see it at the time. This was the case for nearly a century. Jason used anyone he needed to and killed indiscriminately to forward his goals, right up until he arrived in La Push, Washington and met Jacob Black. Jacob was meant to be a tool, a means to control the wolf pack there and weaponize them against his father, but then Jacob imprinted on him and everything began to change. By the time Jacob and others rescued Jason from his father, and Jason took over as Lord of the Children of the Moon, he was a very different person than he had previously been. Jason considers himself largely retired now, which is to say he is spending more time enjoying living his life as opposed to ending others'. He once considered himself a monster and was without a lot of remorse about that, but the influence of Jacob and his pack, his son, Sly, and various others he has met in and around Washington have altered that. Now Jason knows he has the capacity to be a monster when sufficiently motivated, but he doesn't need to be all the time, in an unusual way coming to embrace the most basic truth of being a werewolf as a result: finding a better balance between the man, and the beast. |-| Sheet= SIGNATURE ABILITY Nature's Roar Jason is in many ways connected to the natural world, thanks to his very nature as a werewolf and his druidic knowledge. It often reflects his moods with storms, winds, thunder and lightning heralding his arrival. However in times of great rage, or suitably dramatic moments, Jason is able to call on the totality of his connection to nature, in the form of Nature's Roar. When this gift is employed, Jason either roars, or screams and nature does so with him. Every tree, stone, splash of water, blade of grass, animal in the forests, the very ground itself. All of nature echoes him for miles around. Such that the earth itself seems to vibrate. Even after his roar has ended, the echo of it continues on, rippling outward like a stone being dropped into a serene pond, loosing strength until nature falls eerily muted, or muffled, in the aftermath. SKILLS CASTING POWERS ADVANTAGES WEAKNESSES |-| Background= My mother was one of the few of my father's brides to be a werewolf prior to meeting him. She was one of the 'special breed', one of us born with a gift. I was born with a gift, as well. It wasn't terribly unusual given both my mother and father had them. In my case, it served me well, manifesting as it did at a very early age. My father took to calling me his Night Stalker, for two reasons. My hair was jet black, as black as the night, like my mother's. But more so because when I was stalking my prey, nothing could find me. Oh there were limits to it, I could still be seen if you were looking directly at me, making eye contact. But no other senses, or even gifts among my father's court, could find me when I chose not to be found. My mother kept me out of the politics of my father's court for almost the first decade I was alive. My younger brother Roberte was protected by her as well after his mother died in child birth. But after my power manifested, there was nothing she could do. I went to bed one night, my mother's face hovering above me. That was the last time I ever saw her. In retrospect my mother did me no kindness insulating me from my father's court. When she disappeared in the night, I was quite literally thrown into the deep end. Without it being my actual intention though, I shielded Roberte just as my mother had before me. If only because my father, and thus my older siblings, were far more interested in me. Roberte was just another one of my father's many children, and very much beneath his notice. My siblings moved against me often enough that it became something of a routine. They would come for me, or plot some truly epic demise, I'd escape from them. Early on my gift kept me safe enough, just using it to avoid them when I was their target. But as time passed, I started to use it for my own gain. I wasn't content just learning the rules of the jungle. I became set on becoming lord of the jungle. My gift made me an excellent spy. I started following them, learning their habits. Learning their secrets and alliances. From there it was simple to play them against one another. They walked a razor's edge between open hostility and all out war, and that was a state my father seemed to have little interest in changing. I gave him a reason to think otherwise. It took nearly no time at all really, to cause an all out war. The right ears hearing the right things. Some planted evidence and knowing where certain people would be at certain times. Once I had decided to do it, it took me less then a year to destroy most of my older brothers and sisters just by playing them against each other. Not bad for nine years old, but then kids always know how to make each other look bad. Especially in order to get the praise of a parent. Some are just better than others at it. Me, I truly excelled. My father ultimately stepped in to stop the war, though he was truly impressed. But he wasn't entirely happy either. The war I had started resulted in a dramatic reduction in my father's bloodline. That time marked three firsts for me. The first time my father actually praised me. The first time my father without restraint beat me. And the first I heard of my father having a mission, his crusade. I was apparently going to be a big part of it, I just needed to be molded first. Something he was going to take a hand in personally from then on. He had been impressed with how I used my abilities prior to even my first change. But he was also intent on seeing me use them as more than just a spy. He wanted me as his assassin. To that end he tested me, I was to 'poison' my older brother Valleri with wolf's bane. Valleri was my father's favorite son, by doing this I was certain to take that spot from him, and certainly earn his lasting enmity in the process. I did so with out a moment's hesitation. It was a small price to pay for my father's affection after all. It was actually rather easy with the skills I had already learned. My eldest brother was a light sleeper, a survival trait in our family. But he did still need to sleep sometime. Hiding in his room, I simply waited for him to go to bed. The guards outside of his room never knew I was there, and neither did he. Then I scrambled along the rafters and lowered a piece of waxed thread down to just above his mouth. You have to slowly allow the droplets of liquid to slide down the thread when poisoning someone, patience is a virtue. But Valleri even helped out by licking his lips. Very considerate of him really. The wolf's bane did it's work, drugging him and sending him on a inebriated rampage through our mutual home. He really made something of an ass out of himself, doing significant damage to his reputation in the process. When it came out that I had been the one to drug him, in his own room no less, his reputation suffered significantly more with our remaining family. My father was very impressed yet again. But the skills I was going to need to refine my natural talent I couldn't learn in Romania alone. I was 10 years old when I was sent to Japan, to learn to kill more effectively. My father was ancient, and for many years had been a recluse. But he had cultivated certain contacts and maintained them, as befitted a royal family. Ancient lineages and contracts with other very old families had their uses. In the 1600's Japan was going through a period of change. Expanding commercial contacts with the west, the Portuguese, Spanish and the Dutch and English. Even the defacto rulers of Japan, the samurai, didn't remain unaltered. They changed from becoming a military class to that of a bureaucratic class. But in the shadows, things stayed as they were. That was where my father had contacts. That was where I would learn the ways of the shinobi, the ninja. I arrived in Japan at the close of a turbulent time. The country was at peace for the first prolonged stretch in nearly a century. The Edo period beginning around 1581 marked the end of the need for the skills the shinobi possessed. In this time of peace, the ninja was no longer needed. But it did not mark the end of the ninja. Those skills and teachings would carry on and survive through the ages. My jonin was famous among his peers for an act of defiance in 1600. Sneaking through a group of Tokugawa's defenders at Hataya castle, he planted the flag of the besieging army high on the front gate. I would never know his name, nor was it required. He was simply my jonin, and I was just one more genin in his ryu, hidden away in the mountains of Kii. If not for the documents I carried, I would never have been accepted. I was deemed to old to teach effectively. Yet, when I was accepted, I quickly prove my worth. At 11 years old I began training. I learned quickly, and well the lessons presented to me. There were eight methods taught in the ryu. Body skills, karate, spear fighting, staff fighting, blade-throwing, use of fire and water, fortification and strategy, and concealment. I was young but my gift made me an unparalleled master of concealment. Just the same I learned methods to remain hidden even without it. But that was hardly the only thing I learned. Throwing myself into all of my studies with a ravenous desire to learn, to become the assassin my father wished me to be.. By the time I was 19, I was long since chunin. But with skills in some areas that would allow me to open my own ryu if I so chose. But I had no interest in being a jonin, in passing the skills I had learned onto others. Instead I resolved to continue learning still more from others. To truly be a master, but of many techniques and forms rather than one. It was on a simple mission to seek out information that I decided I would ask for permission from my jonin to leave the ryu and travel the world. The discipline I had learned studying helped me keep my rage in check. In all the years I studied with my jonin I had never changed, despite long since feeling I was capable of doing so. I knew what I was, I had seen others in my father's court assume the various phases of the wolf. But I had found no need to phase. I had found no human my equal in years now. However, when I returned to the ryu, that changed. Returning to the mountains of kii, the ryu was destroyed. Burnt to the ground, with the remains of the army that had done so picking though the remains. Years before war-lord Oda Nobunaga had attacked the power base of the shinobi at Iga and Koga, believing their strongholds their to be a threat. Now the consequences of those battles had found their way to the mountains. Part of me would like to say I resisted the savage, blood thirsty need to kill those men. That I fought them with the very skills of those they had slaughtered as opposed to giving into the nature of the beast within. But I didn't. The anger was over whelming and I made no attempt to resist it. The tears in my eyes over the sense of loss I felt were hot. The blood I tasted, their blood, moments later. That was far hotter, and far more satisfying. They screamed, they tried to fight, they ran for their lives. But ultimately, to a man they bled and they died. They believed me to be an oni, a demon. They were wrong, of course, I was no demon. I was a werewolf, though for them, I was nothing less than death itself. I wandered after that, staying true to my goals of learning. My father grew impatient with me over the years, waiting for my return. But he was immortal, so while he did not precisely care to exercise patience very often, he was capable of it. Not to mention finding me, especially now, was not so easy a task. He waited very patiently for the next dozen years, as I refined my mastery of ninjitso with the study of other techniques and styles. For the next 84 years though, he pretty much hunted me regularly across Japan, China, most of Asia, and Europe as I continued my studies. I also continued to phase regularly in that time. Exulting in the power, learning the phases I knew existed, and slowly mastering them. By the time my father would lay eyes on me again I would be able to flow fluidly through the various guises of the wolf. But that was not the only thing to change. Time hardened me, I saw how the world was changing, how humanity was changing, and I was glad to be apart from it. At least until a chance encounter in Europe. There I encountered a cabal of druids. They revered nature, and new many secrets of the natural world. Secrets I desired to learn as well. But staying in one place also made it impossible to go overly long without being found. Though I wished to remain longer to know more of their secrets, I was compelled through discovery to return home. In the year 1704 I returned to my father's court in Romania. I was over a 110 years old now, but didn't look any older then I had in my late teens. Though my father was pleased to see me, others were not so much. It had taken Valleri many years to live down his embarrassment at my hands, and now I was back to remind everyone of it once again. The night of my arrival he coerced several newer members of my father's court into trying to assassinate me in my bed. These were no siblings, my father had stopped that after the war I had started. I left their heads in a bag hanging outside of Valleri's window. I was my father's assassin, his killer, his general. All he had been I now was, and the sooner Valleri understood that, the better. For all I had learned over the century I had been alive, there were many things I did not know about my own world. My kind, are violent by nature. But we are also immortal. Though it was rare, some of our kind were simply ill fit to a life of conflict. Often they simply died, unable or unwilling to properly defend themselves. However in my father's court they sometimes became the scholars, the keepers of the history. They were my next teachers. From them I learned the lore of my kind. Much of it I knew, such as the phases of the wolf I had mastered in my time away. But there was much I did not know, and that knowledge I devoured. For my father wished that I should know it, and so I would. With my interest in druidism discovered, I was schooled in deeper secrets of their order. Learning that many werewolf packs cultivated relationships with druids. Relationships that were mutually beneficial to both groups. My father had long since abandoned such in our home. But my teachers knew of those that could teach me still. I also learned much about the history of my family, and how it connected to another topic. Vampires. Long ago my father had two brothers. One was never spoken of, having suffered from a rare condition where he was lost to his wolf. He had been taken to a primeval forest far from our ancestral home and released into the wood to live out his existence. His other brother was named Alexi. He was to be the king of our house, groomed for it for since birth. Around 490 BC he fought a powerful vampire, named Caius. The origin, the reasons for the fight were lost, as ultimately was my uncle's life. Caius himself was nearly slain as well, leading to him developing a paralyzing fear of my kind, of werewolves. A fear that would ultimately lead to a war between the species when Caius' coven, The Volturi, rose to power over the vampires. It was a slight my father would never forget, nor forgive. He took the reigns to our family after my grandfather abdicated to him. He took our family into hiding even as the war began. Planning his vengeance for my uncle, and for every werewolf that fell to their war against us. My father would launch his own crusade in retaliation, when he was ready. I had inadvertently delayed that, manipulating the events that lead to the slaughter of so many of my siblings. But in me my father felt he had found a general to lead the pack that he would form to kill our enemies. It was a mission I accepted without hesitation. A choice I would come to regret. For another 84 years, I performed as the good soldier. Teaching my father's army much of what I had learned. I particularly trained Roberte, taking him as my pupil and teaching him most of what I had learned in the ryu I first learned at. I would lead strike teams to kill vampire covens using the stealth techniques of my ninja masters. We fought a shadow war, always staying hidden from our enemies. More rumor and nightmares then anything like a fact. Our actions attributed to rival covens and nomads among our vampire enemies. Through our actions many fables were created among the vampires, myths about our kind and weaknesses we wished them to believe existed. We enjoyed great success, but not every victory was a clean one. We had begun traveling far abroad in our strikes, even as far as the American south west. Vampires had been especially busy there for many years, creating armies and battling for territory. Those with me were veterans of many conflicts, we created much dissension between rival covens and sent many vampires to their final deaths there. I learned first hand the sheer power the new born vampires have, as many of them were created and used like weapons in the deep south. But most of all I learned to respect my enemy. Like us, many of the vampires we encountered had special abilities which made them even more dangerous than their kind usually was. In an encounter with a coven made up almost entirely of such special leeches, my strike group was wiped out. My own ability allowed me to escape, with a new found grudging respect for the blood suckers. Returning home after such a loss was difficult. My father's rage was palpable, almost madness it seemed. That was the second, and ultimately the last time he would beat me as a father would a child. He brooded for several weeks after that. Before coming upon a new way to wage his war. He would find those humans that displayed psychic talents and take them, turning them into werewolves. Stacking the deck in much the way that our enemy did. That then was my new mission. To search for human beings with psychic potential to turn into werewolves. I had seen much of the world in my travels. But this new mission for my father took me to places I had never been. One of those places was to visit an Indian tribe in the American north west. I had heard persistent legends while traveling of giant wolves that haunted the rain swept coastal forests there. There I found the tribe, with whom I remained for over a year. I was something new to them, but of the wolf. This much they knew. There was no giant wolves there then, but I learned of their history, their people and their legends. Some of it sounded very similar to legends of my own people, my own family. The Quileutes would leave a mark on me, which would not surface again for many years to come. For 129 years I searched the world for my father. Bringing him human beings with special abilities. The advent of faster means of travel by those oh so industrious humans made my work simpler sometimes. But even so my success rate was still lower than I would have liked. Often I came into conflict with vampires still, but by now I had hunted and killed them so long I knew when to fight and when not to. Those I encountered alone, rarely lived through the encounter. Larger covens I simply avoided with my gift. Over that time though my father seemed to change. Perhaps the madness I began to see had always been there, and it merely took knowing him, and then not seeing him for long stretches for it to become evident. In the year 1918 I returned to the crumbling castle in the mountains that served as the home for House Lupus. I had returned alone, finding nobody on my last trip for my father to change. Again his rage was nearly a physical force. He ranted as he threw wine goblets and decanters at me, shattering against the wall of his study. It was then I learned the true depths of his madness, and just what his crusade truly entailed. He screamed past foam flecked lips of his desire to lead an army of werewolves into Volterra Italy. To drag the Volturi out of their hiding places and slaughter them in the streets. To kill every living thing, everyone that had contacted the leaches there and then abroad. I tried to explain what that would mean. He had hidden from the world for more centuries then I cared to count. He had no idea of what humanity was capable of. That they were growing more capable every day. I tried explaining to him, that whatever his goal, the result would be the end of vampires yes. But also the end of our own species as well once humanity learned of our existence. He called me a traitor, he said I was either with him or against him. In his madness, which I alone bore witness to he then admitted to things that took the breath from my lungs. He told me how my grandfather had disagreed with him, and the night he died. He told me about the night my mother died. Died by his hands, his claws. She disagreed, she tried to protect me from the life she knew he had waiting for me, and he killed her for it. Visions of my mother's face swam before me for a moment, and I lashed out at him. My claws grew, and slashed through the left side of his face like it was warm butter. His blood spilled and it felt good to do it. I struck out for my mother, and in my mind's eye I could see her smile. But age meant little to my kind. Though he looked older, my father was little weakened with the passage of time. Only atrophy saw any decline in his power. He kicked me right through a window, and I fell. I fell for what seemed like forever before plunging through the ice and into a river that ran along the castle. The rushing waters carried me away under the sheet of ice. Blackness overtook me, and It was some time before I would wake again. But when I did, it was in the back of a wagon, many miles from where I had started. I had been found and presumed dead initially, along the shore of the very river I had plunged into. Months had passed since my fall, trapped beneath the ice I had been in a death like state. Unable to truly die from downing, I lived again when there was air to once more breath. My savior was an elderly couple from a small village in Russia. Even as my eyes flickered open, I was taken aback by what I saw waiting for me. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen was swathing my forehead with a wet cloth. She spoke soothingly in Russian, which I understood from my many travels through that country. Her name was Illyana, and she and her parents had found me. She was small, petite, and yet there was a fierceness about her just the same. Uncommonly her hair was short, in a somewhat boyish way. Yet it suited her well. I could have easily left then, I was in no danger and fully healthy despite what they believed. But just looking into her eyes, I elected to remain and be nursed back to health a little longer. A little longer stretched into days, and the days stretched into weeks. The weeks inevitably became months, which slowly passed into a year. The happiest year I could remember since the days when I still looked into my mother's eyes. I learned much of humans living with them. They felt my lack of knowing many basic things came from my time in the river, never suspecting I was not re-learning them, but simply never knew them at all. Things I had not learned in the ryu centuries before, or in all my time living alongside of humanity. It was my first time living as one, and I found it understandably relaxing. It was easy to settle into such a routine as this. To put my father's madness behind me, to live a life I chose for myself for the first time, well, ever. Illyana and I wed, as was the human custom. In a strange way it felt like I had left what I was behind me. Wolves did not wed after all, they took a mate. In my father's case he had taken many. It was a silly thing really, making that distinction, but it was satisfying to put yet another wall between this new life and the one I had always known. They knew me only as Jason Christopher, for that was the name I had taken to travel among humanity some time before. Iason, was a bit long in the tooth as names went. It drew unwanted attention. They believed me a human being, and for so long as I could be that, I would. Perhaps someday Illyana would know what I really was. But in my ignorance I chose not to tell her now. Had I it might have saved her life. Almost a year after we were wed, my son was born. I named him in honor of my brother, Roberte. He favored his mother in appearance, which I found quite pleasant. Life was peaceful, almost idyllic. The life I had lead seemed so very far away. Yet the reality is we can never really escape who we are, or who we are meant to be. Even after all the years I was alive, I was still being taught such lessons. This one came at a bitter cost. I was out hunting when they must have found my scent. Because I was hunting they couldn't find me, but they were able to find my wife and child. My gift offered them no shield. From over a mile away as I returned I could scent the blood, even over that of my kill. For the first time in years, I shifted, and I ran. But as fast as I was, it wasn't fast enough. I should have known it wouldn't be though. I had delivered death often enough to know it can't be outrun, not in the end. Illyana and Roberte were dead, her parents who were visiting at the time likewise slaughtered. The scents were known to me, my father had actually left his castle seeking me. In some dark corner of my mind I was almost flattered he considered me worth the time and sacrifice. Valleri's sent was there as well. No doubt he has leaped at the chance to be in my father's good grace again after my disgrace. There was no note, the message was clear enough though. I would never truly be free of them. There was however an ambush. Roberte waited there, using the stealth skills I had taught him. They weren't enough though, not nearly, to hide from me. I never even looked at him, just spoke out loud, as I looked at my son's savaged body. I told him, he had been named after him. I could feel him break some inside, but I didn't care then. I couldn't bring myself to kill him, but I also couldn't look at him either. My brother risked much that day, stepping aside as I walked into the forest. Melting easily from his sight as I employed my gift. My crusade began in 1920. My father made it clear, so very clear that I would never truly escape him. So long as he lived he would hound me, follow me, hunt me. Of course he had seen me molded into the perfect weapon, hunting me was no simple task. He would rarely send many against me, as to do so would risk his own crusade. He needed numbers after all to attack the Volturi. Numbers which I had proven in times past I was capable of whittling down. Thus began the civil war among my kind. A secret war going on during the greater war of vampire versus werewolf. My allies have ever been few, my father's tactics growing ever more modern as he learns more of the outside world from the hunters he sets after me. But my own tactics have begun to evolve as well. Rarely have I ever stayed in a place for long. His spies slowly become legion, as more and more of my kind are drawn into the conflict between us. Now I have come to consider that may be wrong. Lately I have come to accept that his own tactics may well be used against him. Werewolves traditionally seldom traveled in packs. Only when we are compelled to by need, or a powerful alpha. But when we do, we are stronger for it. I have commanded packs before, in my father's name. Now I will build one myself, to counter his army. Pack vs pack, father vs son. With nothing less than the fate of my species on the line, if in his madness he should attack the Volturi for all the world to see. The year is now 2005. I have waged this civil war against my father for 85 years, with very few gains. Ours has been a stalemate. Once many years before, the Quileute Indians told me that they were descended from wolves. Now I find myself in the town of Fork's Washington, not at all far from the Quileute reservation. And the forest here, is filled with the scent of wolves once more, as before in legends. Enough to represent a sizable pack. And a Wolf Pack, is exactly what I need. |-| 'Ships= |-| Logs= Category:Character Category:Twilight